The End
by Faerax
Summary: Warnings: Major Character Death Summary: The End. Perhaps, the beginning?


Title: The End

Authors: Faerax

Series: None

Spoilers: Haven season 4(?) through Count Down

Disclaimer: Duke, Audrey, and Nathan and anyone else you recognize belong to Steven King/the Syfy channel.

Warnings: Major Character Death

Summary: The End. Perhaps, the beginning?

Author's Note 1: Been a long while since I wrote this - over 2 years amazingly. Seems somewhat appropriate to post it now since the last episode is this week. This is one vision of how I thought it would end back when Audrey needed to kill the one she loved most to end the troubles.

* * *

The gunshot echoed over the water and around the headland. It was said that it was heard as far north as the Gull and as far to the south as the marina. Inland it could be heard as well, but it was assumed to be the backfiring of a car. An ex-ranger knew differently, hearing the tones as they crossed the miles. He began to pray.

A mourning dove took flight, it's wings scraping the sky with scratchy whistles as the air fought the path of the bird, who by all rights and sense should have been land bound. It was gone with in moments, but it heard the second shot as it fled.

Audrey wanted to scream, to yell, but her voice was trapped inside her frantically beating heart. Wade Crocker had come for her. He had hunted her ruthlessly. No one would deny the man had been mad - not angry, but genuinely insane. The guard had begun to close in on him, creeping up on him, an ambush predator carefully choosing when and where to strike, searching for maximum advantage with minimal danger to themselves.

Duke also had been hunting Wade, but not with the fervor of the guard, nor their methodical patience. There were few places within Haven that his older brother could go to ground, few places he had known, could feel safe. If the guard hunted like a tiger, Duke was a cheetah, running his prey down. Like the great cat, Duke was quick to find his brother, but equally quick to loose him again. Everyone knew that smuggler's heart wasn't in the fight. Wade had come to seek escape, to find hope in a small town. Instead he found only an insatiable thirst for blood and power - one that his younger brother only barely managed, and then, only with the help of the odd little family that had bonded together.

Nathan didn't bother to hunt, not with Audrey beside him. Wade's needs drove him to seek out the troubled, and Audrey's needs to help them would certainly engineer a meeting. Audrey was both the perfect stalking goat and the one best able to defend herself from Duke's brother. She was, after all, immune to the troubles. There was a high likelihood that her blood would be inert. The irresistible force would meet the immovable object and a stalemate would be drawn. Of this Nathan had little doubt. It didn't stop him from damning Duke, or for worrying about the woman he loved.

It was Nathan's gun that was smoking, a small wisp to commemorate the life lost. It seemed out of place in the quiet landscape, one that had been planned to be a luxury hotel, one that was slowly being reclaimed for nature. In front of her lay two forms, neither moving. Wade's wide, unblinking eyes stared at the sun in full glory. His brief life of misery at an end; whether that end was deserved or not was for his gods to discern. It was clear to Audrey that Nathan didn't feel any mercy for the man.

A quiet, nearly soundless whine of discomfort grabbed her attention and set the woman in motion. She ran, and collapsed at Duke's side, seeing the bullet wound to his forehead. Duke's eyes were fixed. He was barely moving, hardly breathing. "Stay, Duke. Please. Don't leave me." Under her hands, Audrey felt the strength leaving the tall man who was in so many ways her best friend. Behind her she heard Nathan call for an ambulance with a shaking voice before he, too, came to rest beside their ailing friend. He reached out with his left arm and touched Duke gently on the cheek. Whether it was Nathan's touch that stilled the suffering man or if it was just his strength giving out, Audrey didn't know, but Duke relaxed under that touch, stopped whining in pain, and then stopped breathing.

The two officers worked on their brother in arms for over ten minutes before the ambulance made it to the outlaying property. The paramedics took over, shutting Audrey and Nathan off from Duke, carrying him away without their support. Without them knowing if he would be alive or dead. Audrey drove exceptionally carefully down the narrow lanes that carried cars like arteries carried blood cells. There hadn't been much blood at all, really. Not for a man Duke's size and weight. Just the god awful noise of his whining, a sound that would force her to wake up years in the future in cold-sweats, one that would be remembered when she fled this life into the next. She had cursed the ME and the job that had caused her to wait, motionless, up on the hill while her friend might be forever motionless in the plains below. Nathan was a wreck, shaking and white. His bright blue eyes were rimmed with white, and he had bitten on his first knuckle until it bleed.

The shooting would be justified. Wade had tried to kill Audrey, had had a knife that gleamed like moonlight made steel. There would be no blame save the never ending blame Nathan would heap upon himself should Duke die. Audrey stilled a moment of anger at the hurting man. Each had acted in accordance to his nature. Nathan would fight to the death to protect the ones he loved, and Duke would do the same. The difference was that Duke still loved Wade. A little brother would always love the older one that he had idolized. Audrey had known from the moment Nathan raised the gun what would happen. Duke would protect his brother, try once more to earn the love demonstrated by the older one. Apologize in function if not in words that the older sibling had been cut out of Simon Crocker's life. She tried to stop Nathan but a chain reaction cannot be halted until the components were used up. The bullets in Nathan's gun were the catalyst to the exothermic reactions that were now self-sustaining. Cold fusion in the forms of two brothers that still loved each other.

When she drove up to the hospital Audrey was unsurprised to find that Duke had been taken into surgery to extract the bullet from his brain. She didn't really care what it would take for his total physical recovery. The woman just wanted her best friend back in any way she could get him. Her lover did his best to comfort both her and himself through the long and lonely hours in the waiting room. It had come as a great surprise to them both that Duke had named Audrey his next of kin and had granted her rights to make his medical decisions. The hospital staff was grateful – they had far less paperwork to do because of it.

People stopped by, their faces blurred to Audrey, their voices quiet with sympathy and condolences. Audrey was polite, but vehement that Duke wasn't yet dead. When at very long last the doors to the room disgorged a doctor in green scrubs, Audrey stood. He told her that they had successfully removed the bullet, but that there had been complications due to the time Duke had been without oxygen. Still, it seemed as though he had a good chance to pull through, but it would be a long road to recovery, and the smuggler would likely never be the man he once had been.

The young woman who had seen so many lifetimes clung to that hope. She treated it like the weakest of sparks, and gently feed it kindling, gradually increasing the fuel sources until it burned within her chest like a small nuclear fission reaction. Audrey would see to it that Duke would not only survive, but live. She and Nathan came every day to the hospital, and every day there seemed some small improvement. Duke's face would be less pale, or his eyes or fingers move slightly. He would very occasionally even fight the respirator even in the coma the doctors had put him under to rest.

For two long weeks, 14 days, Audrey watched her best friend. In those days she consummated her relationship with Nathan, an act that had started out of desperation and loneliness, but ended up making her feel whole. Nathan truly did love her, and she him. All she needed was Duke to wake up, return to them in whatever form he could, to be her brother again. Her family would be whole, united, and stronger.

On the 15th day Dwight called her to say that Duke was showing signs of waking up. Audrey drove as quickly as she could down the long roads to the hospital, her car swallowing the pavement beneath its tires. She was there in time to see Duke settled after they removed the ventilator. He'd started fighting it and it was hindering him more than helping him. Audrey would miss the quiet alarms that told her that Duke was still there, still alive and fighting back, but the trade off was so much better. The light caught the tear that rolled down her face when Duke finally opened his eyes and mouthed her name before slipping back into his dreams.

Nathan and Audrey had promised not to tell Duke that Wade was dead until he was stronger, more able to face the emotional pain with the lessening of the physical discomfort. Wade had been laid to rest near Simon, the father and son laying in death as they had in life, not quite touching, never able to connect. The quiet detective had arranged Wade's internment, a penance of sorts, and a need to be useful driving him.

The two officers of the law never got to tell their favorite con that his family preceded him into death. On the night Duke woke, he'd suffered a seizure, his body tearing itself apart in a frenzy. The great heart in his chest gave up again, and only reluctantly was coerced into beating. The damage, though, had been done. For three days the dark haired pirate lingered as doctors tried to find some hope his brain was registering any patterns save for those of the basic autonomic functions. They failed. Audrey was asked to make a decision she thought she'd been freed from.

It took her two days more to work up the courage to say goodbye to Duke Crocker. The no-account trouble-maker that captained Cape Rouge and drove Nathan crazy would never return from the seas he sailed now. Friends were given the chance to say goodbye, and the crowed was greater than Audrey had anticipated. Plans were already in place for a wake at the Gull, one that would likely last well into the night. The noise wouldn't phase the blonde woman. She'd installed herself in Nathan's home. Even though one life was ending, a new life between them was starting.

Still, when the moment came, only Audrey and Nathan were present in the room, and Audrey herself turned off the last of the machines keeping Duke alive. The doctor had warned her that it wouldn't necessarily be easy to watch, but reassured her that the man she had thought of as family wouldn't truly suffer any pain. It had taken a few hours for everything to fail, and it took more than a little courage to sit there and watch it, but Audrey and Nathan both did. An honor guard for the most honorable thief on the high seas. Mourners for a man that richly deserved them, loved ones who would have their lives lessened by one opportunistic, overprotective, constantly irritating, deeply caring and loving man.

At last the monitors went still, the alarms turned off, and a quiet voiced nurse read the time and recorded it in a log. Audrey felt her heart break. There would be no other man like Duke in her life. No one that would understand her like he had done, that would hold her and love her without demanding anything else. No other man that would fit into the shape of her life as both the older and the younger brother she wanted and needed. Their relationship had always been platonic despite both of them wanting to explore it at different times. Nathan had been at times jealous of Duke's attempts to court Audrey, so much so that Audrey feared it would permanently split the men. Yet their specular relationship carried them both through the storms, and Duke's amorous jibes had fallen away until they only appeared when Nathan was present. The younger brother needling the older one about something he couldn't have.

Audrey hadn't expected to love the smuggler as much as she did, but the untrusting man had come to trust her, and through her, Nathan. She couldn't demand honesty of him without returning it. Duke had taught her as much about love and family as any of Audrey II's foster families hadn't. She would always love Nathan, but it surprised her how much she loved Duke as a brother and a friend. Duke, who wanted her to laugh even if he couldn't have her in his bed. Duke, who just wanted her to be happy, to relax, to simply be. Who was happy to love her from afar, it seemed, because he gave up the playing field to Nathan. He loved her enough to let her go. Sometimes, you don't really know what you had until it was gone.

Nathan's voice was hushed with sorrow, but the hints of wonder played around the edges of his words. "It's cold in here," he said from the other side of the bed. He pulled up the thin blanket to cover the body of their best friend. All his troubles, at last, ended.

A/N (Original): This was written on 21Oct13, on a whim. It was not posted at that time due to story plots afoot in Mortal Coil, which also had to do with love, and the strength and forms of it and if platonic love could be as strong, if not stronger than, romantic love. Inspired by some of Heather F's writing for Magnificent Seven, in which she turns a single sentence into so many meanings, each clearer the more you read her stories.


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